Regardless of the actual risk of your relationships, if you report any sexual activity, you are banned. But effectively, still a ban?įor many gay and bisexual man, it is still effectively a ban. Many countries have moved to that, but the United States has not.Īnd the new recommendation is three months. If you self-report that you have participated in any risky behaviors, whether straight or LGBTQ, whatever your identification is, it’s your behaviors that would limit your ability to donate blood. Meaning, if you have recently done things that increase your risk of HIV or other blood-borne pathogens, like getting a new tattoo, for instance, you are restricted. Some countries continue to ban certain groups of people, but many countries are moving to risk behavior-based screening. And many people have regarded even this less restrictive ban as a homophobic and outdated process. So, the rationale behind banning a whole group of people who are sexually active, regardless of the actual risk they have of being HIV-positive, is questionable. There is a small period of time where a person could be acutely infected, and we wouldn’t be able to test that either from a person’s blood, but our assays would be able to detect any virus in the blood. We can do tests on individuals’ blood to see whether they have been infected with very great sensitivity. Our ability to screen blood products for is really excellent right now. But they are still restricting men who have had sex with men within the past three months from donating blood. Coinciding with the recent shortages of blood donation, the FDA has changed restrictions from one year to three months.
In 2015, the ban was changed to one year, meaning a gay man would have to abstain from sexual activity for a full year in order to donate blood. Up until 2015, any man who had had sex with another man was banned from blood donation for life. has still maintained a fairly regressive policy that a lot of people believe puts irrational or homophobic restrictions on who could donate blood. So, this has evolved a long way, but the U.S. We have good tests to diagnose people with HIV disease and we have sensitive assays to test blood products to make sure they are safe to be given for donation. We’ve obviously come a long way both in terms of our understanding of the epidemiology of and our ability to safely test and screen blood products. When the ban was started, in 1985, blood banks had limited abilities to test blood products, so they banned donations from several groups who were found to have higher rates of HIV disease, including gay men. Could you explain, in brief, the history behind this restriction and how it came to be?īack in the 1980s, the FDA placed restrictions on blood donations by gay men.